navigation buttons

We're starting to hear a few Galaxy S8 rumors well ahead of the usual Mobile World Congress-ish reveal for Samsung's flagship series (usually around late February or March). That may or may not have something to do with the phenomenal failure of the Galaxy Note 7, after which Samsung must be scrambling to shift potential customers' attention elsewhere. So we're treated with two somewhat credible pieces of Galaxy S8 info in a single week: one that Samsung will drop the headphone jack, and another that the company will finally release its deathgrip on physical home buttons.

A few weeks ago, we reported that Android's navbar may be getting solid keys rather than the hollow versions found on Marshmallow and below. Nougat is here now and there are no white buttons, but we're still waiting for the new Nexus phones, plus a maintenance release slated to be Android 7.1. LG, though, seems to think the solid look is the way forward.

What you're looking at above could well be the appearance of the navigation bar in Android N on Google's next Nexus phones, Marlin and Sailfish, when they launch - and possibly all devices using the stock navbar in Android N. According to a reliable source, Google's newest Nexuses may be getting a navbar do-over, but it remains unclear at this time if the new design we're seeing here will be available to all devices running N or only Google's in-house Nexus brand. A closer look follows.

Disclaimer: No matter the confidence level, there's always a chance product updates, features, and some or all details will be changed or cancelled altogether.

Honeycomb, the first Android version designed specifically with tablets in mind, was released way back in February 2011. It was built exclusively for large screens and was never meant to reach phones, but it paved the way for Ice Cream Sandwich, arguably one of the most significant updates to ever hit Android. Taking several cues from Honeycomb, Android 4.0 brought about some of the biggest changes to the OS, not the least of which was the advent of virtual or on-screen navigation buttons.

A few images of Lollipop running on an Xperia phone have hit the web, and the most noticeable takeaway is what Sony has done to the navigation buttons.

The full-size screenshots can be found over in the original XperiaBlog post. All we care about is what's visible at the bottom of each. To put things simply, Sony has changed the icons, and not necessarily for the better.

Here are the on-screen navigation buttons on a Nexus device.

And here's what we're shown on an Xperia device running Lollipop.

In place of the circle that Google uses as the home button, Sony has inserted a house.

There's been a quiet trend among user interface augmentations as of late: the swipe-out app and menu bar. SwipePad is probably the progenitor (and still my go-to app), and we've featured a handful of interesting alternatives, but Edge: Quick Actions deserves special attention. This little app has managed to outdo Google itself by making the Recents function (the right-most button on the default navigation configuration) obsolete.

How so? Instead of tapping a button and then tapping the app you want to switch to, Edge embeds the last five open apps into a quick-firing mini-launcher that comes across the screen as a ribbon.

Soft navigation keys are desirable in post-4.0 Android device... at least for some users. Some people love 'em (and curse the likes of Samsung and HTC every time a new flagship with hardware keys comes out) and some don't. For those who don't, Good Mood Droid (whom we've featured before) has created GMD Hide Soft Keys root. It's a root-only application that gets rid of the navigation bar in all areas of the device.

We've seen this implemented in a few different ways, mostly on custom ROMs like CyanogenMod, Paranoid Android, and AOKP. We've also seen similar apps in the Play Store, like full!screen.

Android's navigation soft keys have proven to be a hit with many users, despite the fact that some manufacturers refuse to utilize them. As nifty as they may be, however, they get kind of boring to look at after a while. And, of course, most Android users love to tinker with things to make them look however they want. Up until now, though, there hasn't been an easy way to add a little flare to them.

According to a new report from DigiTimes (hang on!) this morning, HTC is preparing a new monster flagship phone for launch this fall. The Taiwanese publication says the device will come with a 5" display and a resolution of 1794x1080. If that number sounds a little off to you, it's because those dimensions probably exclude 126 lines to make room for the navigation buttons.

Of course, it's there that the story gets interesting. Typically, manufacturers don't omit lines of resolution from a spec sheet, especially when it would make a nice marketing bullet point like "full 1920x1080 resolution." Neither do supply chain vendors.